As the life cycle of computers and other complex electronic equipment continues to decrease due to new technology and improved processing performance, the useful life span of equipment has become correspondingly shorter. Processing this equipment and salvaging useful components and materials has become imperative from both an economic and environmental standpoint. As a result, dismantle and salvage, and other demanufacturing enterprises are receiving an increasing volume and diversity of returned end-of-life equipment. These enterprises are faced with the problem of determining the potential value of, and processing expense for, heterogeneous lots of equipment when generating price quotes to process such lots of equipment. Usually, one or two predominant factors, such as commodity market recovery prices or contaminated material content, are taken into consideration by an agent of a demanufacturing enterprise, who may add an intangible factor based upon his or her personal experience to the decision process when generating a price quote. However, in the electronics sector, specifically when dealing with computers and other types of information technology equipment, the variability of the internal content and complexity of items contained within a given lot of equipment makes this type of decision methodology impractical. A quote may be generated at a price that is too low and therefore unprofitable, or even worse, such that an enterprise may lose money on the quote. Alternatively, a quote may also be too high, causing an enterprise to lose the work being sought altogether, and thereby lose revenue. Numerous factors such as brand, processor speed, type of equipment, and system age must be taken into consideration, affecting not only recovery potential, but processing expense. When these factors are coupled with the volatility of prices in the recyclable goods commodity markets, the decision process becomes increasingly difficult. Given a situation where a customer does not have a clear understanding of the internal content of the equipment to be scrapped, generating a profitable, yet competitive price quote becomes even more difficult.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a method, system and program product for generating a demanufacturing price quote that, quickly and with relative accuracy, estimates the costs and recoveries associated with a given heterogeneous lot of electronic equipment.
It is believed, therefore, that a method, system and program product for generating a demanufacturing price quote which provides the many advantages taught herein would obviate many of the problems and limitations described hereinabove, and would constitute a significant advancement in the art.